Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology.
HP’s decision to discontinue production of webOS devices have been widely seen because the final nail inside the promising operating system’s coffin. Statements from HP at the way forward for webOS app development sound absurd within the current context. How can, let’s say, HP continue to advertise the webOS app catalog because it has pledged to do when there aren’t any ongoing devices on which those apps can run? How would developers even test apps?
The solution may lie in a fancy ongoing reorientation of the webOS triangle inclusive of the HP corporate entity, PSG (Personal Systems Group, HP’s PC business) and webOS. HP hasn’t said exactly what it’s doing with webOS. However, the mix of publicly expressing commitment to the operating system while dismantling its own devices points strongly to licensing. If truth be told, it’s highly per it; if HP simply desired to wage war with (or sell) Palm’s patent pool, it wouldn’t need webOS developers from now on. HP made no secret of its interest in licensing webOS while it was still producing devices in accordance with that operating system. As Switched On discussed last month , though, there’s a long, bleak history chronicling the problem in building devices according to an OS that a firm is licensing. In other words, pursuing either one of the contrasting business models of Apple and Microsoft ends up in inherent conflict.
But as Switched On indicated within the following column on potential webOS licensees (all still valid save for Motorola) that counted out HP’s PC competitors, it isn’t enough for HP to forestall producing only the TouchPad and phones. If HP is really committed to licensing webOS on this age of ecosystems encompassing multiple sorts of devices, PSG cannot stay as HP’s PC business competes with many potential webOS licensees. (Dell, though, would probably still matter out because it competes with HP on enterprise services).
Barring restructuring HP could have desired to otherwise make, it’s cataclysmic upheaval inside the pursuit of a risky revenue stream that could put the computer-free HP in direct mobile OS competition with high-flying Google and tenacious Microsoft. But it surely can be a technique that HP could assert influence in client devices — even perhaps a broader type of them — without being directly within the low-margin licensee business because it is with PCs.
If that is, indeed, the master plan, though, it’s hard to assume the way it might have been implemented in the way to inspire less confidence in any three of the major pieces of HP, PSG and webOS. Imagine if, to illustrate, Nokia had announced that it was sidelining Symbian and MeeGo without saying that it was adopting Windows Phone 7? Whether you settle with Nokia’s new course, you can not well argue that it wasn’t communicated authoritatively and extensively.
Ideally, here is the order in how things must have gone down at HP:
HP continues to sell webOS devices while telling potential licensees privately that that’s exiting the buyer hardware business. “Incidentally, how do you want to shop a very successful PC business?”
HP finds a buyer for PSG or spins it out. HP announces this after the choice is finalized, maintaining clarity at the direction and ownership of PSG.
HP announces that PSG as a brand new company – or the corporate that buys PSG — shall be a number of the new licensees for HP webOS. If an HP-liberated PSG really didn’t wish webOS as it chose to, say, discuss Windows 8 tablets or was bought by an organization committed to a different mobile operating system, then HP could still move forward with announcements of alternative licensees and the continuum of supported webOS devices wouldn’t be broken because it is now.
Executing this isn’t as trivial because it sounds, with all of the three pieces of the webOS triangle representing billions of bucks in investment. But nor is the OS licensing business itself, where HP has less experience than it did building devices. The primary question: if HP couldn’t make webOS devices reach successful scale (the foremost capability former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein cited through the acquisition) even after “doubling down,” how can licensees?
Because it is, while HP’s webOS device exit clears pathways for licensing, those paths have now been cast within the dim light of developer uncertainty, a mild that grows dimmer with day after day that webOS — the soul of a tool — saunters searching for a brand new host.
Ross Rubin ( @rossrubin ) is executive director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group . Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
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